Marching on

Hallo jeder! I’m back again with the second leg of our vacation through northern Germany, where we visited Schwerin and Lübeck. I’ll just pick up directly after we left Warren, on October 15th.

   After we said goodbye to our family friend and Warren, we headed towards Schwerin, about two hours away. Once there, we stopped by the youth hostel we would be staying in and got settled. We then headed right into the city and started our sightseeing. Schwerin’s main attraction is a massive palace, built centuries ago but made in it’s current form in the middle of the 1800s. It was huge, elegant, golden, and beautiful. We first walked around it’s gardens, before going inside to see the part of it that is used today as a museum. Luckily they had just about the whole thing in english, so it wasn’t difficult to understand anything. The museum was very interesting, and we had a really good time there.

                        

  

   Afterwards we walked into the city to see the quite tall church that rose above the nearby buildings. It wasn’t as impressive as the Kölner Dom of course, but it was still very cool.

   After that we walked through the main shopping street, and headed back to the hostel after a day full of sightseeing. The next day we left almost immediately for Lübeck, a city about an hour away. Lübeck is famous for it’s red-brick buildings, seven church spires, and ancient Holstentor. We weren’t planning on staying overnight, so we had a busy day ahead. We started off at the Holstentor, a famous, medieval gate that once guarded the island city from invaders.

   From there we started our tour of the various churches in the city. There were a total of five famous churches, all built with the same materials and general design. Their 7 spires rule the skyline, rising above the streets. We visited almost every one, stopping by to look inside. Some were still churches, some had been changed into concert halls, and one of the smaller churches even had a museum dedicated to 4 martyrs who stood up against the Nazi regime in WW2.

       

     

  
     We also stopped by various other historical buildings, such as a hospital and the famous Rathaus (town house). We also spent some time in the Buddenbrooks house, the house where the famous German author Thomas Mann wrote his novel of the very same name.

    

     Near the Rathaus was the city square, now a bustling market with goods of every type available. We also had to visit the Niederegger marzipan shop, as Lübeck is famous for it’s marzipan. The history actually goes back centuries, but today it is mostly known for Niederegger, a very popular brand of marzipan in Germany. In their shop, they had marzipan everything - marzipan buildingm=, animals, vegetables, breads, and anything else you could think of. I got some marzipan potatoes, which were delicious.

      

After a busy six hours full of walking in Lübeck, we headed back to our car and drove towards our next stop, Bremerhaven. I’ll stop this post there, and return with our fun stay in Bremerhaven up until the end of our trip. Thanks for stopping by; bis nächste mal!